Judge Largely Denies SerpApi Motion to Dismiss Reddit's AI Scraping Lawsuit

On Friday, a judge largely denied a motion to dismiss from a web scraper, SerpApi, which is accused of conspiring with Perplexity AI to illegally scrape copyrighted Reddit content from Google search results.

In his opinion, US District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said that at this early stage, Reddit has plausibly pleaded that there was a conspiracy, with SerpApi providing a product to circumvent Google access controls and Perplexity AI paying for it.

Engelmayer’s decision came less than two weeks after another court dismissed a similar action raised by Google, finding that the company had not proven that rights holders, such as Reddit, had ever authorized the search engine to prevent the scraping of protected content. Google told Ars that it planned to amend its complaint to keep its lawsuit alive, but SerpApi told Ars that Google and Reddit were both trying to “use the DMCA to wall off the open Internet by retroactively claiming control over content that they didn’t author and don’t own.”

For both Google and Reddit, the mission is to first prove that SerpApi and Perplexity AI conspired to access snippets of works covered by the Copyright Act that were, second, protected by a technological measure effectively controlling access, and that, third, the defendants circumvented that technology.

Google failed on the first prong, giving SerpApi a rare win at such an early stage, but it may strengthen Google’s arguments that Engelmayer agreed with Reddit that it was plausible the company had authorized Google to use anti-circumvention technology to block malicious scraping. And it’s likely upsetting to web scrapers like SerpApi that Engelmayer thinks Reddit can make that case, even though Google’s technology was invented more than a year after Google and Reddit struck their licensing deal.

According to Engelmayer, it would be impractical to expect partners to update licensing deals every time a company rolls out new security methods. Additionally, Engelmayer found that “the Google Decision is not to the contrary” of Reddit’s case because, unlike Google, Reddit went “beyond the bare allegation” that Google used to broadly claim that it generally “has licenses to display copyrighted content.” Instead, Reddit argued that its licensing agreement with Google directly prohibits certain uses of Reddit data that are now being accessed due to the circumvention methods employed by malicious web scrapers.

Specifically, Reddit argued that when it licenses content to partners like Google, its partners agree to delete posts that Reddit flags when users remove content. According to Reddit, “millions of posts” are deleted monthly, and unsanctioned efforts like SerpApi’s partnership with Perplexity AI make it impossible for Reddit to protect its promise to users to honor content removals. And allowing deleted posts to fester in Perplexity AI’s answer engine allegedly harms Reddit’s reputation, as well as its profits, Reddit successfully argued.

Reddit cheers; SerpApi prepares to fight

If Reddit wins the fight, the popular online discussion forum could be in a better position to force all AI scrapers to enter into licensing agreements. Reddit has asked the court for an injunction blocking SerpApi and Perplexity AI access to both Reddit and Google websites, another injunction stopping circumvention of Google SearchGuard, and a third stopping SerpApi and Reddit from using previously scraped data.

A Reddit spokesperson celebrated the ruling against the motion to dismiss in a statement provided to Ars.

“Today’s ruling brings us one step closer to holding bad actors accountable,” Reddit’s spokesperson said. “Reddit supports responsible access to public content, but we oppose companies that bypass our protections, ignore our rules, and profit off our communities without permission. Redditors create some of the most valuable human conversations on the Internet. We intend to protect them.”

The fight is seemingly far from over, though, with Engelmayer noting that SerpApi and Perplexity AI may prove through discovery that Reddit never authorized Google to protect its content in search results. SerpApi may also strengthen its defense if it can prove that all publicly accessible content in Google search results is not protected by the Copyright Act, a footnote in Engelmayer’s opinion suggested.

Last week, a DMCA expert with Public Knowledge, Meredith Rose, told Ars that Google and Reddit seemed to be “sort of grasping at whatever tool is available” in the face of the sudden, continuous rise of AI scraping over the past three years. And Reddit in particular appeared weirdly positioned in its DMCA claim because “the judge in the Google case said, ‘Well, in order to have standing to bring a lawsuit under the DMCA, you can be the copyright owner or the exclusive licensee or the person who is deploying and manufacturing the technological protection measure at issue,’” Rose told Ars.

And confusingly, “Reddit is none of those things.” But Rose did acknowledge that DMCA rulings seemed to be more about “vibes,” suggesting that it may be hard to predict a winner or loser in this fight just yet.

This week wasn’t a total loss for SerpApi and Perplexity AI, which did manage to get Reddit’s unjust enrichment and unfair competition claims tossed, since they were both preempted by the Copyright Act.

Asked for comment, Jeff Homrig, a lawyer for SerpApi, told Ars that “we remain confident in our position. The court has decided to hear the facts; the facts are on our side. SerpApi accesses public search results, not Reddit’s platform, and public information does not become protected because a platform wants to charge for it. We look forward to making that case.”

Perplexity AI did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.

Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder in Reddit.